Friday, March 29, 2013

Cadence and Honker's Ale

Cadence, in it's most basic sense, is a call-and-response work song that sets the pace of a running or marching formation. While there's no manual or regulation for these, they serve to keep people in-step, but the shouting also serves to enhance the aerobic difficulty of the task. The cadence caller can gauge how strenuous a run is by how loudly and clearly the group calls back. Cadence calling also serves another purpose, though.

Once upon a time in the Honors College at Pitt, I attended a lecture by William Marcellino, a professor visiting from Carnegie Mellon. He described the tradition of cadences and illustrated how they serve as oral cultural transmission and reinforcement within those populations. It's amusing in retrospect that I was part of such cultural analysis from atop a literal Ivory Tower.

Some time later, I joined the Army. This gave me a participants' view of the oral cultural transition. I had become part of the intended audience as well as a potential editor and propagator. Marcellino's focus was on the Marine Corps (where he'd served) and their "Jodie" cadences. The Jodie cadences are about esprit de corp, but also about betrayal and alienation from the population they serve. Army cadences, in my experience, are less like this in theme, but the delivery and impermanence is the same. I've decided to record some here for posterity: these are simple repeat-what-I-say running cadences.

I wanna be a Sapper-Ranger
Live that life of sex and danger
Sapper-Ranger
Sex and Danger
rollin' rollin' rollin'
along; my knees are swollen

I've read only good things about Chicago's Goose Island brewery. So, I couldn't pass up trying Honker's Ale when I saw it on sale. I really liked this. It's clear with tasty malts and a hop profile that lures me to drink more. This 6-pack disappeared far too quickly. To my memory, this is the first English Bitter I've had, so I can't say how true-to-form it is, but it's definitely intrigued me to try more varieties.